The nation: an inalienable concept

We give over, therefore, this last editorial of the year to consider an idea, a concept that for Catalonia is of the utmost importance. So much so that it was the inspiration of this bulletin’s first editorial, published on 21 June 2005. And an entire seminar on 8 March 2007.  Specifically, we refer to concept of collective rights.

Let us remember that our Foundation’s mission is to work for IVA, that is, Ideas, Values and Attitudes. While our field of action is not the strictly political, we consider that the CEJP can provide a service through IVA. Obviously a country must have clear ideas. About many things and especially two: what a country it is and on what it aspires to be.

And one of these ideas is NATION. And before this comes collectivity or community. And the rights and duties related to the community.

It is the central doctrine in Spain’s academic, intellectual and political world that there should be individual rights, but not collective rights. Both on the right and on the left. This we say with all the insincerity and incongruence in the world, because Spanish collective rights are recognised and defended. But not those of Catalonia, indeed not.

This, despite a long history of collective consciousness, of sharing projects, hopes and emotions, and also disgraces. Despite sharing a language and culture. Despite having made a historic contribution to shaping Spain’s collectivity. For them Catalan collectivity simply does not exist. It has no unique personality. And a Catalan, more than a person who participates in “Catalan-ness”, is merely (according to Rajoy) “a Spaniard registered as a resident of Catalonia”. He may have rights as a Spaniard, or as a resident of Premià de Dalt, but not as a Catalan. And to demand rights as a Catalan, that is, rights that correspond to a member of a community that is called Catalonia (according to Alfonso Guerra) is entirely reactionary.

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What is Catalonia? It is a collection of municipalities? Is it a set of administrative districts? Is it a list of people? Or is it a language, a history, a sensibility, the frame of collective projects? Or, put another way, is it also a community?

Is it reactionary to claim membership of a community, and therefore, demand the respective rights of this community? Perhaps Guerra and Rajoy and countless others believe so, yet this goes against what is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without doubt the most important document of the last centuries to make progress on respect, justice and freedom of people. It states (Article 29.1): “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible”. Hence, there is nothing reactionary in demanding the rights of a community. On the contrary, it is progressive. Truly progressive.
                                     
As such, to demand the respect of his community’s rights is everyone’s right. The rights that need to be respected in order to allow the development of people.

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To cite a highly indisputable writer when it comes to defining rights and duties –Kant- it can be said that man is at once social and antisocial. That is, he needs to uphold his individual and non-transferable personality, and at the same time, communicate, share and cohabitate (namely, to live with). And, as a philosopher far closer in time and space observes, “only by balancing these two tensions can the individual can find an inoppressive space for relation and at the same time a space of creative freedom”.

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Here and everywhere in the Western world, the most consolidated and effective frame has been the nation. The nation, large or small, independent or not but functioning. The collective reality most capable of creating this space we term creative liberty has been the nation. Like everything it may have been well used or not, though it is the collective reality that has most contributed to creating the building blocks of culture, of conscience, of human bond, of creativity and of coexistence that are needed for human development.

It is for all these reasons that Catalonia must defend her character of nationhood. As well as defend the Statute, she must demand the right to have everything necessary placed at the disposal of her people simply for her own development.

This is what lends moral weight and dignity to our national requirements. And to doctrinal depth.  And the various obstacles aside, we are compelled to uphold our claim. Today and for ever.